


There's No Such Thing as Cold

by LittleLostStar



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Fluff, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, Victor can't deal with how lucky he is, Yuuri's just sleepy and innocent and adorable, sleepy yuuri
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-08 12:40:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8845495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleLostStar/pseuds/LittleLostStar
Summary: The night before the Grand Prix final, Victor lies awake in a sweltering hotel room, consumed by his thoughts and touched by an act of sleepy kindness. “To be a champion skater in Russia, you can become just as cold as your surroundings, or you can accept life in the vacuum for what it is and become a cosmonaut, floating in space, working with the entire world in your peripheral vision. Yuuri, though, he radiates. He shines. Get him into the right mindset and he becomes the stuff of stars, blazing past Victor in the vacuum with barely a thought.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> In the past 48 hours I’ve watched Yuri on Ice twice in a row, listened to the music several dozen times, and just generally fallen head over heels in love. Last night, at two in the morning, I grabbed my laptop and made a playlist of the Eros and Yuuri themes and feverishly typed out a few hundred words of ridiculous fluff. This is the fastest turnaround on a fic that I’ve had in at least ten years. I’m putting it up fast, just before Episode 11 airs, but I’m proud of it; it’s been a while since I wrote a one-shot so easily, and that's a very good sign. Please let me know what you think; I’m new to this fandom, but I love it, and I would love to write more things.

Love burns hot and cold, impassioned and calming. Eros and Agape. Fire and ice.

It all keeps coming back to this origin, this pattern Victor has unleashed, and—as of right this moment, at two in the morning the night before the Grand Prix final begins—it’s getting a little bit annoying. Because while Barcelona is undeniably cold in December, the heater in the hotel room has broken, and it’s sweltering. Victor can’t sleep; he feels suffocated by the heat.

Unlike many people, he has never been bothered by cold. He’s Russian; snow and ice are a comfort to him, and warmth an exotic pleasure—being warm always evokes the thrill of _different_ , but never the cozy space of _familiar_. Nonetheless, if he’s too hot for too long he begins to itch, and he’s itching now—almost unbearably—but he can’t disturb Yuuri _. Sleep-deprived Yuuri is emotional,_ Victor reminds himself, clenching his fist as his mind conjures a vivid flash of a parking garage in China, of those brown eyes filling with tears.

 _Sleep-deprived Yuuri is also_ _incredible,_ whispers another part of him, a dark delicious part which solidifies as a lump in his throat and makes him feel even warmer; in response, he kicks off his comforter as far as he dares. He firmly pushes the thought of quad flips from his mind, probably for the first time in his whole fucking life, and begins to absentmindedly spin the ring on his finger.

Victor’s skin feels clammy, but the ring is almost impossibly cool. He recalls learning about physics as a child, kneeling on the rink surface and watching as his tutor pressed her ring into the ice, where it magically seemed to melt a divot into the glassy surface. He remembers her explanation: metal conducts heat very well, and it draws the warmth from her hand and directs it to the ice. Cold is not its own entity, she said; it’s defined as the absence of heat. There is no such thing as cold; there’s merely the vacuum, waiting to absorb any heat source it finds.

The cold will take everything it can, sucking the heat away, until the system is just lukewarm and stable.

It makes a lot of sense. Russia is physically cold, and the skating world within it is a demanding vacuum of time, energy, money, and emotional health. The tutors and coaches have icy demeanours to match the worst of the weather, and your only guarantee of success is to stamp out any of the warm or weak parts of yourself. If a Russian champion has an inner fire, then it’s a pilot light—compact and blue and brutally efficient, never an ember out of place. Victor has lost track of the number of washouts that have come and gone at his home rink; they last a month or two, but when they crack—and they always crack—they can’t bear to lose the warmth of human kindness. It takes a special type of person to succeed in this sport.

Well, Victor concedes, there are two types. You can become just as cold and rigid as your surroundings, like Yuri Plisetsky, or you can accept life in the vacuum for what it is and become a cosmonaut, floating in space, working with the entire world in your peripheral vision. You can channel the energy you have into something that is efficient and compact and also beautiful and good. Victor has often dreamt of floating through empty space, unable to see anything but nonetheless confident in the direction.

The memory of the parking garage in China rises again, unbidden, and deeply painful. _“This time, I’m anxious because my mistakes would reflect on you, too!”_

There’s no such thing as cold; there’s just the void that possessively consumes any heat source it finds. He thinks of liquid nitrogen, of things becoming so cold that they shatter.

With a silent sigh, Victor lets his right hand flop back, and the ring hits the edge of a bed that isn’t his. His breath hitches, and he slides his hand into the space between his mattress and Yuuri’s.

When they first arrived in the hotel room, the two beds had been separated by two feet; now, it’s maybe half an inch. Moving the frames had been a son of a bitch, and at some point one of them must have kicked the heater the wrong way, and _Jesus it’s so hot I might melt._ The sheets feel soaked, even though they’re not. But it was worth it, because of the silent shy smile that played across Yuuri’s lips as they pushed the beds together without discussion or hesitation, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world to do.

Victor closes his eyes and breathes deeply. Yuuri—his _fiancé_. The lump in his throat swells unbearably and the dark delicious voice murmurs the cure like a spell: _kiss him kiss him kiss him kiss him—_ but he can’t. He’s trapped in place, staring at the ceiling, and the heat feels like a suffocating weight, so crushingly _there_ in its presence that Victor finds himself craving the sharp snap of the wind in St. Petersburg—and then, suddenly, like magic, there’s a little _whoosh_ sound across the room. A wave of cool air hits his face, and it’s so relieving it’s nearly orgasmic. It takes Victor a second to register that the coolness is not the imagined oasis of an overheated mind, and he looks over just in time to see Yuuri’s silhouette at the window, slumped ever so slightly against the screen. He’s pulled up the blinds in order to slide the glass panel open.

“...Yuuri?”

The silhouette shakes its head. “Shhh,” he mumbles. “S’okay. Hot in here. I know you don’t—I...” The lights from a passing car throw a diagonal sash of light across Yuuri’s bare chest and face; he recoils from the window like Dracula, dropping the cord. The blinds slide back into place, plunging the room back into darkness, as Yuuri flops back onto his bed. Victor waits to hear the rhythmic breathing which signals sleep, but it never comes. Instead:

“V-Victor.”

“Hmm.” Victor grunts in response, lips firmly closed. Lately his heart has begun pounding anytime Yuuri says his name, which is totally ridiculous. He hasn’t been this flustered since he won his first gold medal.

“I’m going to land the quad flip in the free skate. I can do it.”

Victor breaks into a wide grin, but he keeps his voice neutral when he responds. “Don’t worry about that now. Go back to sleep, and we’ll deal with the free skate after you’ve aced the short program.” The plans fly out of his mind as soon as they’re out of his mouth, because the cold is a distracting relief. He inhales the deeply, relishing the feeling of the night air pouring into his lungs, sinking into the coolness as if into one of the Katsuki baths. Everything seems clearer once the heat is gone. Warmth, like Eros, makes Victor lose himself just a little bit.

Over the past eight months he’s been incredibly, insanely lost, and it’s not because of the weather.

A siren screeches through the night—an emergency, somewhere in the city below. Victor glances over, startled by the sound, but what he sees instead is the outline of the body in the other bed, curled up beneath the covers. Yuuri, who burns so brightly, who lives in fear of losing control, who _still_ doesn’t realize his potential. Every time he performs the Eros routine, he becomes more and more entrancing. Tomorrow he’ll make the entire arena fall in love with him.

 _Okay_ , Victor corrects himself, _three_. There are three types of people who can become skating champions. Because Yuuri is anything but a cold vacuum; on the contrary, he radiates. He shines. Get him into the right mindset and he becomes the stuff of stars, blazing past Victor in the vacuum with nary a thought.

It’s dark in the room, and very late, but Victor swears he sees a distinct shiver cascade down Yuuri’s back, and sure enough he pulls the covers up a little higher.

_There is no such thing as cold; just the absence of heat._

Victor turns on his side, sliding across the mattress, a little closer to the edge of the bed. _If Yuuri embodies heat, then what does that make me?_

Another shiver, this time more distinct; a gust blows into the room as if on cue. Victor can’t help but reach across the gap, closer and closer, and he hesitates for a heartstopping moment before resting his palm against Yuuri’s smooth skin. He can almost feel the ring on his finger turn cold as it leeches Victor’s body heat— _good riddance_ —and he imagines pouring the warmth into Yuuri’s body through this tiny little piece of metal.

Suddenly there’s a firm resistance under his hand as Yuuri moves, arching his back into Victor’s palm, and before he can pull away Yuuri has turned over to face him, eyes glittering and open.

“What’re you doin’?”

Victor withdraws his hand. “Sorry, Yuuri, I—” his apology dies in his throat as Yuuri lays his palm overtop of his own, and he can feel the _clink_ of the rings and the outline of Yuuri’s fingers, cool and dry.

“Stay with me,” Yuuri says, so clearly it might as well be a clarion call.

“Yes,” Victor whispers back. He doesn’t feel like a vacuum anymore; he instead feels himself falling into orbit, being pulled by a stronger force. He overwhelmingly wants to curl around Yuuri like a cat, to bury his nose into Yuuri’s black hair, to feel the steady thump of his heartbeat. _Heat can consume, too._

Yuuri’s hand tightens. “Just—just like this?”

Plans reverse. “Yes. Of course.”

Yuuri sighs contentedly, and Victor’s heart explodes with emotions so strongly that he fears he’ll spontaneously combust.

After a few moments, Victor steels himself for what he’s about to say next, as he feels his eyelids begin to droop. Deep breath: “I’ll stay. No matter what. This—” he lifts his finger to _clink_ his ring against Yuuri’s—“is the only gold that matters. You’ve won already.”

It takes a second to register how silly that statement was, because _you’re his fucking coach now, Victor, and that kind of talk does not land a skater on the podium, you moron_ , but then he realizes that Yuuri’s breathing has become steady and rhythmic, and has been that way for the past few minutes. Victor allows himself a tiny side smile, imitating the one Yuuri puts on all the time when he looks at Victor but thinks Victor isn’t looking back. Their hands are now the same temperature, and it feels so normal that it’s like Yuuri is just an extension of himself. Lukewarm—no, that’s not right. _Equilibrium._

There is no such thing as cold; it’s an absence, a void, but that doesn’t make it needy. Maybe it’s just waiting, patiently, compact and efficient. When the warmth arrives, perhaps it isn’t wrenched apart violently but instead gives itself away, freely and kindly, because two warm _things_ are vastly less lonely than one blazing fire and a whole bunch of nothing.

That night Victor dreams again that he is flying through the darkness, but this time he’s not traveling of his own accord; he’s falling, untethered, towards a new source of gravity.

Out in the cold vacuum of space lies a brightly burning star.


End file.
